


Bee Dance

by butterflydreaming (chrysalisdreams)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Kaiju (Pacific Rim), You already know she dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 17:03:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrysalisdreams/pseuds/butterflydreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The kaiju were not "great beasts" following a hunting-and-gathering instinct. They were an invading army following orders. Armies are made of soldiers. </p><p>Otachi was going in to battle, she had an unborn child growing inside her, and she still had a connection to a foreign mind somewhere in the new world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bee Dance

 Note: A meander is a type of labyrinth walk, one that is a connected loop.

Otachi's powerful wings swept the air. She raged with pain: her severed tail; the lacerations from the three-armed, red monster; Leatherback's death. Still, she pushed past the pain. She was a soldier, not only trained for the battle she fought but bred for it, a specialized super-soldier who could withstand this anguish.

Her opponent struggled in her grip.  She wanted him to pay for the desecration of Leatherback's body, for that final volley of blasts that had torn her comrade's body apart.

. . .

The one called Otachi did not have a name among her kind. None of her kind needed individual names. Joined in the meander, the path of common mind, each knew each without a need for designations. Otachi was no more the sword of an ancient Japanese warrior than she was a virtue, or a flower, or beloved of some mythical deity. Leatherback's skin was her own, not the aged and toughened skin of a dead beast, stretched across her shoulders. Our kind gave her kind code names because _kaiju_ was not enough.

 _Kaiju,_ the _other_ mind had called her when he witnessed the memory of her birth. _Kaiju_ he had called them all. That mind was a naming mind.

 _Kaiju_ did not mean what Otachi would have called herself and those who emerged from the birthing cells beside her own. She would have called them _sister,_ and _beloved._

. . .

Leatherback touched her mind. _Are you ready?_ she asked. The touch of her mind was always so much more gentle than Leatherback's massive, boulder-shaped form could imply. Leatherback was dense and compact, while Otachi had been modified to be long and lightweight, to allow for the lift of her wings.

 _As ready as I will ever be, I think,_ Otachi answered. She was a master at keeping her doubts quiet. If she had been any less adept, those-that-came-before would have removed her from the roster. Otachi fought for her placement in the fourth wave. It had been difficult. Her superiors wanted the fetus that Otachi carried to be closer to birth, but Otachi argued that the baby would develop better if she, the surrogate mother, were in the frontier world sooner. The baby's tolerance for the harsh environment would be modulated by filtered exposure through Otachi herself.

 _Don't worry. I have you covered, my dear,_ Leatherback assured. She waggled her blunt head and her bioluminescent crest wobbled. _My augmentation was made after that foreign mind invaded  the meander. When I hit them with an electromagnetic pulse wave, their inorganic hearts will stop. We can then tear them apart like finger food at a singles mixer._ Leatherback wiggled her head flaps suggestively.

 _Are you trying to make me jealous?_ Otachi teased.

_Oh, sweetie. We're the first to go through the corridor as a pair, and we're not coming back. The jealous ones are all the girls we're leaving behind... for now._

Otachi had to laugh. _You're incorrigible._

. . .

Before our mad scientist drifted with the remnant of Multivore's secondary brain, Otachi had not questioned the swarming. She was a soldier, and like her compatriots, bred with specialized biology to effectively exterminate the vermin of the frontier. A place had to be made ready. Then the Queen would come into this savage new world to reign over the wet and the dry places. Otachi, and the one called Leatherback, and all of the soldiers who had gone before to fight and die in this place did so because it was bred into their blood and bone.

Those-that-came-before directed the swarm. In the drift, Newt understood them as, "Precursors."

Newt Geisler had dubbed them "overlords," but his influence in word choice came subconsciously from an early diet of classic science fiction. Someone of different experience might have suggested "masters." Had Raleigh Becket, after his time in construction, been the one to name them, he might have designated them "foremen," a term that for him held a mix of resentment and resignation. English-born Stacker Pentacost, in spite of his time in the military, might have chosen "liege." Plural and singular were not a distinction in the meander. Mako Mori, if she could have parsed such a connection to the enemy of her fierce heart, might have struggled during the drift against the desire to name them "sempai."

Yet none of these terms encapsulated the dynamic of obedience between Otachi and those that commanded her. It was not that she and her legion could not disobey orders. Such a thought _would not occur to them_. No such thought had ever incubated in the meander. It was the touch of the foreign mind that brought Otachi the idea that she might instigate an action of her own desires. The caress of the _other_   against the common mind lingered, and it drew her toward it.

. . .

 _I'll be right behind you_ , Leatherback had said the moment before they started through the dimensional corridor. Otachi was the faster swimmer, and she reached the ocean/land nexus ahead of her fighting partner.

Being launched into immediate action quelled the distraction of strange sensations that crashed over her once Otachi passed into the foreign world. The one called Trespasser, first to experience the frontier, feared and hated this new world. She went into it with alone with ancient and sluggish race memories. Otachi carried Trespasser's experience in her genetics, but she did not feel the first warrior's fear. She had Leatherback -- running now on her powerful legs along the ocean floor to join her partner -- to share the strange sensations with her. She felt the heat of impending battle coursing through her blue blood. She knew the thrill of the pioneer. Otachi, too, would be first -- in her own way.

She was going to find the _other._

She felt its mind, still, out there above the boundary of water. It was a sentient being in this world. That such a thing was possible amazed and thrilled her.

Her kind understood that the vermin had minds enough to make the aberrant things that had killed her compatriots, but _that one's_ mind had been full of bold thoughts and dreams and wishes. It loved and hated and wanted; it felt joy and sadness and fear. She understood from its mind -- confirmed by those-who-came-before --  that those mechanical things set against her kind were soldiers, as bizarre as that was to Otachi. However, its mind drew a line between itself and the vermin, and Otachi thought this standing apart meant that it was sentient while the others were not.

She wanted very much to find it and bring it back into the meander and have it tell her and her sister soldiers everything about itself.

First, she had to fight.

She launched out of the water, ready. The "hunter" in front of her was a monster: an asymmetrical distribution of arms, brightly tinted in a long wave color so that it stood out in high contrast against the blues and greens of night sky and water.

Light from the vermin nest illuminated the bay. The monsters blazed in spots, their crude mockery of bioluminence. Otachi's vision was keen and adaptive. She did not need the night to be lighted with more than starlight, but the artificial light did not blind her.

With a battle roar, she attacked. In combat, the monsters primarily used their upper limbs, so arms were a first target by default. Otachi lunged for the single arm. Ripping it off would throw the mechanical monster out of balance.

Like a storm, the three arms began to spin, turning up water and wind. Otachi knew this technique. She was built for it. The cells of her body were encoded with the many deaths of her kind by this crimson machine. Its whirling blades scored across her chest. Her thick skin split, but the blades could not penetrate through Otachi's armored hide.

Pain was a shock. Otachi bellowed. She grappled with the red jaeger. Already, she could see a second mechanical soldier lumbering near. She needed to dispatch this first one quickly before the metal soldiers gained advantage. A third one of their number stood in the distance, unmoving. She did not speculate as to why. She took a firmer hold on her opponent and lashed her prehensile tail over her head. The hard, reinforced end bludgeoned. She opened it like a hand, gripped, and ripped at the machine.

Bitten and shredded, the abomination sank under the waves. She held it down to make sure that the encased vermin died. They were small and inconsequential without their large machines, and Otachi might have let them swim away and scatter, but she was under orders.

. . .

Raiju swam in the great lake, but Slattern lay on the beach with her head on the flaky sand. She slapped her three tails about with pleasure as Otachi's specialized "tongue" checked the population of Slattern's skin symbionts, the crew of smaller creatures that protected skin against the cruelties of the frontier world's alkalinity. Without the miniature workers, the soldiers' skin would suffer in the high saline of the ocean and burn from the oxygen dense air. The new world was almost ready, but it was still a rough wilderness.

Slattern and her fifth wave comrades were charged with accelerating the environmental changes. The fourth wave, of which Otachi and Leatherback were the tag end, focused on dry environments. Their extended mission included setting the fires that would put more desirable gasses into the air. Slattern, Raiju, and Scunner would begin in the wet territories after their primary mission.

For now, though, Otachi and Slattern enjoyed the friendly interaction of grooming. Otachi's glowing sensory organ unfurled. She ran it over Slattern's scales with delicate touches. There was a lot of Slattern to cover.

Otachi bumped her battering ram ridge against the similar face armor that Slattern displayed. _All healthy, all dormant for now,_ she relayed affectionately.

 _You put me right to sleep,_ murmured Slattern. She rolled over and stretched with languid pleasure, splaying all her toes. She relaxed but remained on her back with limbs loose. _I'd better enjoy it while I can. When are you being deployed?_

 _Very soon,_ Otachi responded. _Leatherback is going with me. And you?_

 _Not yet._ Slattern curled up and lay her great head across her arm. _Once you establish base, I may get to carry a body birth, too. Those-who-come-before may implant Scunner and Raiju as well. I think the discussion is over when to start more native births. I think that once we see that your little one is healthy, we will get the go-ahead. We want to see that baby of yours born!_

Otachi conveyed, _The native births will all be immature so that full development to adult size happens in the new world environment. I hope that our babies can play together._

Slattern assured, _I'll urge my team to visit from the deep waters as long as you promise to come down from the skies._

 _It's a deal,_ agreed Otachi. The individual part of her wondered if the sentient and its offspring would play with their children as well.

. . .

She spat her reservoir of acid at the blocky jaeger. She just had to hold on until Leatherback caught up. Fighting the monsters, she now understood how all her kind before her had fallen. It was not just a case of inadequate weaponry. The difference between the common mind's understanding of a fight and the reality of actual combat were vast. Up close, the enemy was hideous. A cold, rigid hide covered an almost hollow interior. Steam and hot smells jet out of specialized holes. Up close, she could even see the vermin writhing around behind an area of translucency.

They were disgusting. Everything about these automata was disgusting. She hurried to drown this one, too, before it hurt her more.

Inside her, the small one kicked and turned in her womb. She felt her unborn child's attention split between the fight and the siren call of the _other's_ near presence.

The third jaeger, the one that had up until now remained still, sprang into life. It moved fast. Otachi was suddenly unsure. Could she take that one down as well? She was still fighting the heavy second machine, and it was not yielding to defeat easily. Otachi started to panic. Could she fly in time? Could she escape?

A column of water shot into the air as Leatherback erupted from the ocean. _I told you I'd be right behind you,_ she quipped for Otachi while she bellowed a war cry at the enemy.

 _Should have sent Scunner with us to give you a lift,_ answered Otachi.

Leatherback took over the fight with the second machine while Otachi engaged with the third. Its fast moves caught her up and knocked her down.

Otachi watched her partner to finish the mechanical soldier. She disregarded the tremoring vibrations as the occupants screams traveled through the water, because her opponent was clacking and whirring with the activation of a point blank weapon.

At that moment, she thought of the baby inside her.  Her heart beat closely, and she felt different to Otachi than other soldiers. She was special, a female born of a female, a soldier for the new world meant be born in the frontier. Otachi would not be able to dodge weapon fire from the machine quickly enough. Her daughter's future would never be.

 _Let's finish this, shall we darling?_ Leatherback announced. She dived, resurfaced in range, and blasted her pulse device. It forked across the water, leaving a wake even in the churned ocean surface.

The lights on the jaeger went out. The automaton froze in place as its systems locked up.

 _Nice work, you sexy beast._   She left dispatch of the remaining metal soldier to her compatriot, and charged off toward the lights of the vermin nest, from which she could sense the _other's_ mind like a scent of perfume wafted on a breeze.

. . .

Otachi raked her taloned hand through the hole in the ground. She could feel the mind of the _other_ so close, but why was it under this crumbling surface? She reached toward its presence. The _other's_ mind was not connected to the meander anymore, but still its essence resonated like a fading echo. Otachi pulled her hand out of the hole she had made. The vermin under the ground made noises. She would squish them once she found the _other._

There was no time. Her comrade in arms fought with the fourth mechanical that had unexpectedly appeared. Otachi needed to find the _other_ quickly, then give her comrade support. She wavered. Tracking down the one that had connected to the common mind was her mission. Leatherback was strong, and she could hold her own. Otachi questioned her hesitation and uncertainty of purpose.

Tracking down the infiltrator was her mission, but her orders were to terminate it. Otachi recalled the feeling of connection with its mind. It could be an ally. She had felt its loneliness. It needed her. She needed to find it before any other and re-establish the bond. She would protect it.

She unfurled her extrasensory tongue into the opening in the ground that she had made. Yes, it was there. She was certain... and then suddenly uncertain. Her tongue gathered the vermin smells. She followed the echo, but only found more vermin. _Where was the other?_

Otachi drew back sharply as she felt Leatherback's dying shout. She whipped around, horror and grief raging against denial of her comrade's death. Then she witnessed the unforgivable act: the automaton stopped, pivoted, and blasted Leatherback's fresh corpse with gunfire. Flesh and blue blood sprayed with each impact.

The fourth jaeger stomped toward her, the aberration of its mechanical body filling Otachi with revulsion. She rose up on a wave of her hate. When it lifted its bludgeon, Otachi threw herself into the fight against it.

 The impact of their masses crashed through the structures of the nest walls. Otachi's anger was a scream through her body, but the machine fought her with determined strength. It moved almost naturally. It threw her. She spit her corrosive poison at it, and it dodged. She slammed it against a wall, and the wall of glass crumbled.

Otachi's prehensile tail gave her advantage. She used it to hold the monster while she savaged it with fang and talon. Her grip was strong. She was a weapon, the top of the line, programmed through the echoed reflections of racial memory. She would win.

An avalanche of terrible pain crushed her as the jaeger exhaled freezing liquid in a spray. Instant cold covered her tail. The flesh snapped away, shattering as it ripped from her body.

Otachi activated her hidden weapon. She would finish this battle victorious. The snapping sound of her wings opening was like a whip. The wide membranes caught the ocean scented air. Her hold on the jaeger unyielding, she shot into the air, flapping her vast wings, climbing toward starlight.

. . .

Newt Geisler went into his drift with the fragment of kaiju brain amped on adventure and with an unprotected naiveté. He carried everything into the drift: childhood memories, fears and desires, wild theories of what he would find in an alien mind. Most of all, he carried the great love that motivated him. He was, as Hermann stated truly, a kaiju groupie.

Otachi's mind was receptive. Newt's mind communicated with hers in the common mind that she knew as the meander. The bond was made. It was only a glimpse, and Newt came out of it with the intense desire to connect again.

Otachi felt the same. He left the message of his love in the connection, and Otachi would follow.

. . .

Higher and higher she flew, and the enemy exerted itself against her. She would fly until the air no longer held her up. She would fling this metal horror into the sun, if she could. Her mind was nothing but anger and torment.

Under the thunder of her heart, she sensed the song of another heart pulse. Its whisper cut through her mind's white space. The baby. The new life, growing, dreaming.

Her mind calmed, and she began to feel the contemplative path of the meander. She was connected. All her sisters grieved with her. All her sisters murmured, _vengeance, vengeance, vengeance._

She felt the sting too late to counter it.

Gypsy Danger's chain sword cut through Otachi cleaner than waking cleaves a dream.

Otachi's final thoughts were shouts against her failures. She thought of her failure to find the _other._ She thought of her failure to safeguard the baby. _If I could join you to each other..._

Her pieces fell on the streets of Hong Kong with a drum-like percussion.

. . .

 _Vengeance,_ the common mind buzzed. The baby was being crushed by the weight of her dead host mother. Filtration and nutrition through the placenta had ceased. Her body had not completed gestation, but the common mind urged her birth.

She sensed one mind closer than the others. The mother-mind had sought this one.

With all her power, the baby kaiju tore her way out.

-end-

 


End file.
